Great Allegheny Passage mural installed at Eastern Continental Divide

DEAL — The train seemed so real that it felt like it would streak from the mural straight into the hiker’s path.

The mural artist Wayne Fettro laughed when he saw the visitor’s startled pause. He said while working on his art he has enjoyed the interaction with people hiking and biking on the trail.

Fettro and his assistant, Zane Gates, were putting the finishing touches on the four interconnected murals on the structure that carries MacKenzie Hollow Road in Somerset County over the Great Allegheny Passage at the Eastern Continental Divide. The Continental Divide is the highest point of the passage that runs from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C.

On the trail’s overpass’ four outer walls, Fettro has portrayed the stories of the passage, the longest multi-purpose rail-trail in eastern U.S.

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“There is not just a lot of historical value here; there is also a lot of recreational value,” he said.

Travelers headed toward Pittsburgh are now greeted with images of trains, coal and coke workers on one mural and George Washington, who envisioned a connection from the Potomac to the Ohio as a young surveyor, and his travels on the other. Coming from the opposite direction toward Washington, D.C., the scene is the C&O Canal along with the view from the Big Savage Mountain Tunnel on one side and insets of the volunteers who helped make the trail possible on the other.

“The corridor between Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh has captured the imagination of people from the beginning of our nation,” said Linda M. Boxx, president of the Allegheny Trail Alliance, in a press release. The trail alliance is a coalition of the seven trail organizations in southwestern Pennsylvania and western Maryland that are building and maintaining the trail.

“Especially important to us is the portrayal of volunteers. Volunteers make the trail possible and help maintain it,” she said.

Fettro, who created many of the murals along the Lincoln Highway and has worked all around the country, found this project especially inspiring because of the volunteers who for more than two decades worked diligently to create the trail. He emphasized he is just a part of a much larger project.

“I am amazed at the people who had the foresight to construct the trail and now who maintain it,” he said.

The project was paid for by a grant from the Southwestern Pennsylvania Heritage Preservation Commission. The Progress Fund was the conduit of the funding.

Sandra Finley, project manager for the project, has been working with Fettro since August through all the stages of the project and she said she could not be more pleased. She said Fettro was “fabulous to work with.” A biker herself, Finley called his vision that thousands of other bikers like herself will see: “a glimpse of what made the trail happen.”